Birgitta Lund - "In Transit"

 

I really find this series of travel photography by Birgitta Lund very interesting. Named "In Transit", Lund's work represent's her journey from Copenhagen to America, specifically New York where she studied. I was drawn to the series when I saw it in an online photography magazine article, by the first image I have added to this post. I loved the neon colours and the yellow of the taxis under it, and it reminded me of Crewdson's work, although her images come from a very different place, away from his heavily controlled movie style sets.

I am beginning to be very drawn to the idea of travel and movement, especially on the road. This fits very nicely into the transitional spaces theme, and is something I would definitely like to explore...

The Renowned Gregory Crewdson - Colours & Light

So following my shoot, I continued on my quest for inspiration and research. When browsing through my blog I tried to start looking at why I liked the images, other than for the reasons I have already outlined to do with the surreal aspect. Most commonly, I found, the images had be shot during the twilight hours, or at night. I really love the vibrancy of the colours at this time, and I found they really reminded me of Gregory Crewdson's work.I thought he was especially relevant as a lot of his work deals with surreal themes, in a seemly normal environment.

I specifically looked at work including vehicles and street scenes, to conform to the transitional spaces theme I started with. I absolutely love the colours that characterise Crewson's work, the rich blues and purples really bring the image to life, and the oranges and reds artificial neon lights and street lamps create a wonderful mix. I'd really like to start working in this sort if light, waiting for it to be right before I shoot my subject, I find it extremely inspirational!

FIRST SHOOT!!

So it's been a long time coming, but I have got one shoot under my belt. Basically, having taken inspiration from everything I have researched and the idea of transitional spaces I decided to attempt to 'paint with light' using my car as a subject. I wanted to try and create a visually exciting image that uses the light trails to give the image a surreal feel.

These first three images are the experiments I started with. Using a white LED Torch and three battery powered candle effect lamps I created the effect. I tried as best I could to outline the car and paint in some of the details. I don't feel these images came out particularly well but they are a start! Another issue is that you can see where I have been standing still for too long whilst the shutter has been open.

I tried an angle from behind the car so I could try and get a light trail from the lights of passing cars. However, this did not go quite to plan as the road was not very busy, and the shoot was taken fairly late at night, but in theory it could add another interesting element to the image. Again, I tried to outline parts of the car, but I am not very happy with the results, as it just seems messy. I could improve on this by using brighter lights, or trying to shoot details of the car.

I moved back around to the front of the car, and used a wide angle lens to distort the car and give it an odd effect. I began to get a bit bored with simply outlining the car, and halfway through I dropped the bike light I was using. Thinking the picture was ruined but still with 20 or so seconds left on the exposure I ran around the car, waving the light to try and get as whacky an effect as I could. Surprisingly, these are the results I am most happy with, as they give a the car a weird halo of light, which looks more like graffiti, which I quite like, and reminds me of some of the LICHTFAKTOR work in my earlier posts.

Overall I am fairly happy with the shoot, and feel that with a little more time and experimentation could produce some interesting images. However, this avenue may be limiting, so I will continue with my research and development to see where I could go from here.

DMU Television Advert

I remember seeing the DMU advert when I was first looking at Universities to come to, and it is a great piece of moving image relating to what I want to achieve in my project.

Vehicle Photography

I have started to think about how I can relate my project ideas outlined in my previous posts to the Transitional Spaces theme. I began to think of subjects I could use to light in my photographs, and I have decided that using a vehicle or car of some kind would be a good place to start.

I have been looking at work that I find inspirational both technically and creatively, and these photographs lifted from Flickr are particularly interesting to me, and relate to what I want to achieve with this project.

I plan to take influence from these images, and go on a shoot with my car, and see what I can get!

LAPP - Light Art Performance Photography

Having investigated the painting with light theme further I came across these images, created by a duo who call their work LAPP or Light Art Performance.

Jan-Leonardo Wallert and Jorg Miedza see their work as sculpture, and I am really interested by the shapes and atmosphere they are able to create by using long exposure. In the same way as the "LICHTFAKTOR" work, the LAPP images have an eerie quality- the strange orbs of light and strange patterns give the images a ghostly and spooky feel. This is their way of altering the universe without post production manipulation, and I find this extremely interesting and creative!

Painting with light - Altering the Universe!

These images are taken from a body of work by an artist who goes by the name of "LICHTFAKTOR" from Colonge, Germany.

I started looking at this work as I began to think about ways that I could physically manipulate the world I was photographing, to give a surreal and interesting aspect. I have looked at work like this before and been very intrigued by it, as I love the use of colour and shape, it brings the images to life, and feel it's very much applicable to my project in the way that it creates an otherworldy feel.

This is definitely something I will be trying on my first shoot for this module.